Understanding and Supporting Undocumented Students

This volume is about a student group whose particular needs are not well understood: students without legal residency status, better known as undocumented students. Student affairs professionals may know that undocumented students are on campus, but they often know little about them. For many of these students, this is by design: they choose to exist in the campus shadows to avoid sharing their secret and jeopardizing their status. Their fear of being discovered is understandable: they believe that they could be deported if their residency status were disclosed. This volume provides a broad overview of the factors that contribute to the experiences of undocumented students. It examines the applicable federal and state laws and policies, the students' precollege experiences, their academic and socioemotional experiences on campus, and their lack of professional employment opportunities after college. However, when it comes to understanding the experiences of undocumented students, the whole is greater than sum of its parts.
Understanding these students-their experiences and their needs-requires more than simply understanding the individual components of their social, cultural, and legal environment. This volume also contains the actual stories of undocumented students, graphically illustrating the cumulative effect their legal status has on their day-to-day lives. This is the 130th volume of the Jossey-Bass higher education quarterly report series New Directions for Student Services. An indispensable resource for vice presidents of student affairs, deans of students, student counselors, and other student services professionals, New Directions for Student Services offers guidelines and programs for aiding students in their total development: emotional, social, physical, and intellectual.